Ex Libris: Modern Americana: Studio Furniture from High Craft to High Glam

For all lovers of modern furniture this book will be a hit. Modern Americana is edited by Todd Merrill, of cool NYC antique shop fame, and Julie Iovine, a design writer. It functions almost as an encyclopedia of modern furniture designers, broken up into four sections - The Studio Artisans, The Designer Craftsmen, the Custom Designers, and The Decorator-Designers.

What I like is that in the upper right-hand corner of each page is the last name of the designer that page is about, so you can flip through the book and find the designer you are looking for quickly and easily. Also, if you're like me and you've never actually read a National Geographic magazine article, you just look at the pictures and captions, this little detail of the book lends itself perfectly to your reading style. I can say though, that the short articles, a few pages each, written on the designers are very informative and just enough information to be insightful but not overwhelming.


Here are a few previews:

From The Studio Artisans 
Michael Coffey, who, after turning his hobby of woodworking into his career, found his inspiration in the Vermont nature that surrounded his studio.

A cabinet made of Mozambique wood, one of Coffey's preferred materials.

From 1973 to 1983 Coffey has a studio in Poultney, VT where the surroundings, like this rock bed, were of great inspiration to him.

From The Designer Craftsmen
Paul Evans and Phillip Llyoyd Powell, who worked together on many pieces, which they usually sold in their store in New Hope, PA.

A collaboration piece photographed in 1965. Paul Evans was know for his metal work and Powell for his woodworking.

George Nakashima's work was, and still is, known for his hand selected wood, usually high quality American Black Walnut. "He believed he was giving a second life to the trees he worked with." (p.126)

American Black Walnut marked for particular projects.

From The Custom Designers  

T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings produced both custom designs and mass-produced furniture, opening his own design studio on Madison Avenue in New York City in 1936.

The famous Klismos chair made of Greek walnut and woven leather straps. Robsjohn-Gibbings said "it's the most beautiful chair in the world.  It is to furniture what the Parthenon is to architecture." (p.195)

Edward Wormley took his inspiration from the past, as many designers do, but added his trademark modern touch to each of his designs. Together with furniture manufacturer Dunbar, Wormley became a household name. 

You have to love the now oh-so-illegal placement of the baby in this advertisement for Dunbar from the 1950s. 

From Decorator - Designers  

John Dickinson's pieces show his influence from African and Etruscan motifs, such as animal legs and hooves. He made a splash with his white, beige, camel, and gray color palette and produced lines for Drexel furniture and Macy's amongst others. He also created pieces and whole interiors for individual clients. 

These pieces were designed in the late 1970s and early 80s by Dickinson. 

And finally, William Haines, of 1930s and 40s Beverly Hills fame. A former silent film actor and self-taught decorator, Haines designed furniture, decorated for movie stars, and owned Haines Foster Inc., which opened a showroom on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles in 1935.

Haine's furniture is still available today at www.williamhaines.com

From the library of E.R.Miller to your library, or at least google search library, Modern Americana. 

Something New: Thonet Coat Rack

We were really excited when we found this coat rack. Thonet pieces are some of our favorite vintage pieces. (As you can tell by the chair in the photo too!) This coat rack caught our eye for a few reason. One is that it's pretty big, so it makes an impact. Another reason is that its signature curvy Thonet lines adds lots of character to any entry, which is a space that can be, (but shouldn't be), pretty boring.

And who is Thonet, you may ask? Well, it's a guy's name first of all. Michael Thonet was German, born in 1796. He was a furniture maker and designer running a regular business but then he started to play around with the idea of bending the wood. Starting with veneer strips and then working with solid rods of beechwood, Thonet created his trademark curved furniture shapes starting in 1830s. That was cool enough but then he was also a pretty good business man, jumping on the factory mass production bandwagon of the time. By the 1850s his designs had won awards at the London and Paris World's Fairs and he was on his way. One of his most famous designs is chair Number 14, from 1859, which was a kit if parts.

The designs were not only for chairs but also for other items such as coat racks (as you know), tables, and settees.

After his death in 1871 no new design were created, however the company was again innovative in asking architect's to design furniture for their new lines - so that's not such a new idea when we see it happen now. Otto Wagner, Josef Hoffman and Adolf Loos are among the architects who designed for Thonet.

Otto Wagner for Thonet

Thonet Brothers' furniture was not the sought after prized furniture that it is today though. Instead, Thonet furniture was the light weight everyday furniture that filled houses and public spaces.

Each design was numbered and each pieces was numbered as well. On vintage pieces you can usually either see a stamp of Thonet, or a Thonet label.

What Do You Call It?

First there was the settle. Yep, bad name. It was a wood bench basically with a back panel and side panels or arms. Think of it as a church bench with a higher back. The reason it's a big deal is that it was pretty big and heavy so it was not easy to move, which "was evidence of the increasingly stable household that accompanied the rise of the middle class in the late Middle Ages."** There were versions of the settle that included the back tilting to create a table top and some that had storage under the seat.

Settle with tilting back that turned into a table *

After the settle came the settee in the 17th century, which is like an armchair that got stretched out. A settee was usually upholstered and provided seating for two or more people. It's changed a lot over the years but the same idea applies.

French Louis XVI Style Settee 1900

 

Teak, oak and linen settee by Hans Wegner Denmark 1950s

By the mid-18th century there was the sofa. It was a more casual solution to seating than the more formal settee, with an upholstered seat, back and arms and allowing for two or more people to sit. After 1830, when coil-spring deep buttoned upholstery was invented the sofa became even more popular.

So then is a couch the same as a sofa? The name couch comes from the French word, coucher, which means to go to bed. And even though we use the word couch and sofa interchangeably, a couch is traditionally quiet a but different. A couch, in the late 18th century, was more of an upholstered bench with a foot rest at one end and head rest at the other, more on the lines of a daybed. 

**

If you were a fantastic fan of E.R.Miller you read our blog about Graphic Standards that mentioned davenport and divan as styles of sofas that, not too long ago, were more commonly used terms. As promised, here is more information on those styles. 

A davenport is a type of sofa that is boxy (think Adirondack) and is named after the Boston furniture-manufacturing firm Irving & Casson & Davenport. It is similar to a futon in that it sometimes was made to open to a bed. 



***

The divan was created in France after 1830 when, as mentioned above, coil-spring upholstery began and people were gaining an interest in more comfortable seating. The name is based on a Moorish architectural term for a platform type area decorated with luxurious fabrics and cushions designated for (surprise) important people. 

***



*   chestofbooks.com
** The Wordsworth Dictionary of Furniture by Charles Boyce

***Wikipedia

Orrefors Glass

I first learnt of Orrefors glass when I came across a pair of lamps similar to these:

Pair of dark blue Orrefor lamps available at Quotient

 

They were different but still simple. I wasn't very surprised when I learnt that Orrefors is a Swedish company since many things Swedish are, in my mind, wonderfully beautiful. And yes, before IKEA came other companies that walked the line of good design and mass production. Orrefors, which started in 1898, made many more pieces than just household wares however.  They also made art glass prized for its beauty and even given as gifts by royalty and heads of state.

The name Orrefors comes from a combination of the word orre, which is the bird you see in the company's logo, and the word for, which is Swedish for river crossing, where the company's factory was located.

                         

Teams of glass blowers, decorators, draftsmen, designers, and engravers made the Orrefors name famous through the decades. One of the struggles facing the company was finding new production methods and styles to define not only the company but also a Swedish style of glass design. Another issue was constantly finding a balance between making art glass to raise the notoriety of the Orrefors name and mass producing household wares which was necessary to maintain a steady stream of profit for the company. Attitudes towards design and fashionable style were another consideration.

**

Glass production was not the sole work of the Orrefors company at its inception (it started in 1726 as an iron company), but by about 1915 a glass design and production team was well established. Following the philosophy of the Arts and Crafts movement in England, Orrefors' designers strived to make all their designs elegant and appealing whether the piece was to be mass produced or used as a piece for an exhibition. The Arts and Crafts movement called for "beauty [as] a social function which contributed to a better, and more harmonious life."* Beautiful things were required to help society, and manufacturers, now well established after the Industrial Revolution, were needed to produce these objects. So magnificent were some of Orrefors glass pieces, that through a series of exhibitions in the 1920s Orrefors pushed itself to the forefront of global glass manufacturing. 

  

  

Styles and public views never stay constant for too long and as the years passed Orrefors designs morphed to meet new demands. Historical styles such as Art Nouveau and Art Deco were being banished for modern Industrial styles led by Germany by the 1930s. Form follows function was the new philosophy. Orrefors designs employed less engraving and more glass blowing at this time as the company again tried to redefine its style. The qualities of glass, as a material, were celebrated and how the pieces were created was made clear, in a way returning to the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement of the early 1900s. 

                            

Come the 1950s Orrefors was part of a global focus on Scandinavian design that again allowed the company the opportunity to be acknowledge for its beautiful and skillful work. Designers such as Nils Landberg, created stunning pieces for Orrefors that are, once again, in high demand. 

                                                

Orrefors is still in business selling glass products, http://www.orrefors.us/ but I have to admit the older pieces have more allure! 

        

Nils Landberg for Orrefors at gallery L7
$520 each piece

Carl Fagerlund designed lamps for Orrefors available at B4
$2,750

Detail of pair of lamps by Orrefors available at Maison Gerard
$5,800

1920s Art Deco Orrefor chandelier with etched glass shade available at B4
$6,000

*   Orrefors Glass by Alastair Duncan pg. 26

** http://www.sendaframe.com/





Graphic Standards

I'm working on a new project for the gallery and it involves using Architectural Graphic Standards. I love organization and all that comes with it so a book of Standards, as in THIS is the way it is done, is right up my alley. Better yet, Architectural Graphic Standards has been around for what seems like forever so getting an old copy has the added pleasure of perusing the crisp but battered edged manila colored pages for beautiful vintage images as well as information.

This one made me appreciate all the geometry that makes simple arches look so, well, so beautifully simple.

You might not need a brickwork pattern for building a new home but if you need a different idea for how to layout the tile for a back splash or bathroom floor; or maybe a paver pattern for that garden patio that you can't wait to get out on because of all this winter weather, here you go:

Graphic Standards was first published in 1932 by John Wiley & Sons and it was written by Charles George Ramsey and Harold Reeve Sleeper. Back in those days things were different in many ways. The average cost of a new house was $6,510.00 and the average cost for house rental was $18.00 per month. A loaf of bread cost about seven cents*.

Lifestyles and houses were also drastically different. Great estates were built to include rooms for entertaining and living in ways that we no longer expect, such as drawing rooms, conservatories, stables, or greenhouses.  

However, some things stay the same, such as a good drink. And why not make that bar look good.




We have the same stuff but we lost the fancy names like davenport or divan. (More on this later.)

We also just lost the need for some things entirely.



Architectural Graphic Standards is in its eleventh edition, available on CD and as a good ol' book. Looking back at the old Standards it is very true that some things change but other things always stay the same.

*thepeoplehistory.com